Corrin and Nico arrive

Corrin and Nico arrived Wednesday morning. We had hoped Corrin would sleep on the plane, but apparently she decided to stay up all night dancing and singing in the aisles instead. Her favorite songs are "Old McDonald Had a Farm", an improvised/scat version of the alphabet song, as well as an original composition, "Singing my Song." The last one goes like "Singing my song, Singing my song, Singing my song", and then the refrain is "All day! All day!" Anyway, at least she wasn't screaming the whole time.

Improbably, their flight (out of JFK) arrived over an hour early. I met them at the airport, brought them home, and put them to bed for two hours. Corrin was cranky when she woke up, but pretty quickly decided she had enough energy to go down to the waterfront and chase swans for an hour. By 9pm (having slept 2 hours out of the previous 30), we were able to get her to sleep, but only for a short time. She woke up again by 10:30 or so and really didn't sleep much the rest of the night. She's now finally adjusted: in bed before 9 and sleeping the night through.

Every day after dinner we take a walk to one of the many nearby parks. Parks here are much more fun (read: dangerous) than they are in the states, and also much more crowded. There are kids everywhere here.

On Saturday, we went downtown to do a bunch of shopping for exciting things like clothes hangers, rainboots, and socks. We had lunch at a Hiltl, a vegetarian restaurant that has been in business since 1898. It was delicious.

Today (Sunday) we went to the Zoo with my co-worker Mike and his family. They have a daughter Corrin's age named Sloane. Corrrin and Sloane are friends now. The Zoo was pretty good. We saw flamingos, fish, many tiny primates, an elephant, alpacas, a snow leopard, a tiger, a lion, alligators, and so on in that fashion.